Jasper,
Thank you for taking time to go through our entry. women are more likely to get infected with HIV/AIDS than men, simply because of both biological and social reasons, so this gives us a stronger motivation to develop female specific programmings in our organization. We have established a girls forum program, with an objective of providing safe spaces for young girls.Young women in Botswana face a variety of challenges, including poverty; low social economic status; and socio-cultural norms that inhibit access to education, leadership, economic autonomy and their long-term health.teen pregnancy, substance abuse, HIV infection, ‘passion killings’ and unemployment are only some of the barriers young women face.The purpose of the Girl’s Forum is to create a safe space for young women to envision and pursue the future they want for themselves and their communities.Programming includes discussions on the issues girl’s face, such as sexual health, life skills, skills trainings, exchange opportunities, social enterprise projects and community outreach. The Girl’s forum has already made great achievements in the community, such as conducting an ASRH workshop; forming PACT groups in Zonal Secondary Schools; developing a mobile tuck shop; the formation of an outreach entertainment committee, and performed other outreach programs.

Thank you very much George. Ours is really a phenomenal story that has given not only us hope but people over the world. It gives me great pleasure to see these guys, like you put it "the so-called useless lazy youth" doing such tremendous and inspiring work in their community. Its just beautiful. and we hope to make huge strides in moving the program forward.

Thank you very much Kevin. I am glad you too beleive in the power of young people in positively influecing the lives of other young people. It works with us here in SEDYEL and in most cases I like to give myself as an example of such approach. you know, 8 out of 10 teachers who taught me at both Junior and Secondary Schools told me that I have no promising future, and interestingly at some point I too believed them. So after being a changed person, I realised that their statement was based on the friends I had, who only advised me on how best to steal a tin of glue in a shop for us to sniff. we always say "show me who you friends are and I will tell you the kind of a person you are".
SEDYEL's values statement reads "We believe in building individuals who are motivated and inspired, who have high pesonal intergrity(informed and empowered)whose dreams and aspirations are respected and who can creatively use their skills in community development"so I guess that provides you with a bit of insight on the traits we want our youths to embody.
I agree with you kevin, there are a lot of ways young people can be involved in the program besides just playing, so we are very open to other educational peer-peer approaches which in most cases run concurently with our empowerment tournaments like theatre, so we really strive very hard to be as inclusive as we can and work with all young people in our communities in solidarity regardless of their educational background or any other condition.
I like your thought about us partnering with Architecture for Humanity,I beleive that would go a long mile in helping us reach our goals and I was able to sit with the MYSA Trainer placed in SEDYEL to futher explore that and please if you have any idea of what will be the best starting point let me know.

Tito,
Thank you very much for the congratulatory comment. We are very proud of the achievement and look forward to keeping the dialogue flowing back and forth with other changemakers. This is a wonderful experience for us down here, we have tapped a lot through this platform.

regards

Andrew,
Thank you for the congratulatory comment, we appreciate it. I have personnaly witnessed a lot of programs in my community and Country being implemented for the youth, and all these programs have failed to deliver, as they were implemented for the youth and "not by the youth" themselves. So SEDYEL turned all that around by giving us as young people leadership roles and involving us in decision-making that affects our lives, which I think is a phenomenal step in youth and community development (empowering the youth).
It will be a pleasure to have you visiting us, we would love that a lot. let us keep in touch.

Sportive regards

Kitso

Nicholls,
Great to see you out there. We are as proud as you all are about the achievement, and that our entry has given a lot of people hope out there, we believe our story is worth sharing with friends and partners in development through sports. I am personally intrigued about the discussion this entry has generated and I am learning a lot everyday.

On the onset of the program, We, the youth were involved in the designing, planning and implementation thus encouraging them to learn by doing while building their competence from the lessons learnt and thus empowering them and encouraging them to take the full leadership. One challenge that makes it hard for most programs to fully involve the youth is that the designers come with a 'parachute' concept into the communities where they expect to implement them rather than identifying what exists in those communities and developing their structures based on their findings and the needs of the people. The South to South concept of our partnership has helped us alot in learning from an experienced organization. MYSA leaders did not come to SEDYEL and bumped in with their model, but they infused it to fit the communities of our geographical coverage and thus discouraging the one size fit all approach that many organizations use to develop their structures even if they are not youth friendly.

The SEDYEL has developed an initiative that is geared towards creating a Girls forum where the female participants can meet and discuss about issues that affect them and are empowered to come up with solutions to the identified challenges while encoraging them to work on their recommendations with no fear or guilt. In all the committees, from the village level there is always a girls representative so as to ensure that they are involved in all decision making process with voting powers. This is mandatory.

Keown,
Thank you very Seodhna for being part of the architectural team, I am too intrigued by the dialogue our entry has generated also learning on the way which is fantastic. You are very right, the youth down here in South East are really passionate about this program as they have the ownership of it. I think over time they have realised that it is not really about trainers from MYSA but about them, taking initiative and doing something positive for thier communities. I will try to put up the video up here for the rest of the changemakers to see it, thanks for that thoughtful idea.

Ziba,
I am glad you found our entry exciting and full of possibilities.

SEDYEL is a fairly new program and looks set for a promising future as some of the changemakers have noticed. We are still dependent on our donors, but still coming with Social Enterprise activities to generate revenue for sustainable purposes. One of those is the mini-van you talked about, once purchased we will make the public hire the van and pay a certain amount of money to generate revenue for the program. The other exciting enterprise is our recently developed mobile tuck-shop for selling sweets, oranges and fatcakes, this has proved to be very important and effective and in a long term will contribute a lot to the overall financial sustainability and diversification.

MYSA was born out of passion for football almost 20 years ago and has pioneered the linkage between sport and greater community development. So as we wanted to develop a similar concept to MYSA, we found it very useful to enter into a skills development capacity building exchange partnership that aims at exposing youth from the South East District to MYSA in order to support their future planning and sustainability of the project in Botswana. This led to the placement of two youth from MYSA to SEDYEL to mentor and inspire the development of youth leadership capacity of the youth in SEDYEL. Through this South-South exchange, there has been a lot of skills exchange between SEDYEL and MYSA youth leaders.

As SEDYEL continues to grow, it is true the youth will need human resource and capacity building skills to sustain the project and running of the league, therefore we are looking at developing their skills on referring and coaching skills. And also invest on leadership and management skills, life skills component of the program.

I have stayed in close touch with the development of SEDYEL from its inception and I have to say that the accomplishments are nothing short of extraordinary. I have seen the mobilization of so much skill and energy and with it the growth of self esteem. Mobilizing 2000 young people in a small district (South East District) in a country with such a high HIV/AIDS prevalence is a crucial contribution to community At the beginning of the project it was impossible to imagine that the youth would be able to make such clear, passionate and moving presentations to people in positions of power. Now there are young men and women who can with confidence share their learnings, their insights and of course their accomplishments. By mobilizing youth from every village in the district - male and female - and combining sport with peer education, the whole community is witnessing change on an unprecedented level. The young people of South East District are making an enormous contribution and finally it is beginning to be recognized. Initiating a Girls Forum at the beginning of the project has ensured that the young women's voices and skills are integrated within both the Sports and peer education components of the project.

I have been lucky enough to visit with the youth of SEDYEL on a number of occasions. Any time I drop by there are so many people crowded into the office - planning, strategizing, sharing stories, organizing league schedules or school visits and just "hanging out". The energy is palpable and real. Everyone wants to make a contribution and to feel part of things. Growing SEDYEL from the ground up and ensuring transparent and accountable decision making structures that are exclusively youth led, has ensured that this project has buy in from the people it serves. The community is looking at the project with pride and are lending their support in a number of different ways

Zaynab,
nice to hear from you and thanks a million times for your comment. I am very glad you can see the light at the end of the tunnel and that the program is headed to a very gracious place, I cant agree less; it is truly set for a promising future. of course a lot of hardwork has been put into this program. a lot of us if not all of us merely got involved with these groups out of peer pressure and sometimes because we wanted a to feel superior and belong to a group. It is heartbreaking to hear of the situation in the UK and I do think the problems the youth faced in Botswana are more or less the same the youth in UK are facing, so your idea of SEDYEL working with UK based organizations is pretty much fantastic, I mean the model we have developed and forged with MYSA and the City of Toronto has given us as Batswana in this part of the world a lot of hope and we do wish it can be replicated to other parts of the world as we are able to work together in solidarity.

Dana,

Thank you for your insightful comment, I appreciate it.

Well,though my Community is faced with a lot of Challenges such as HIV/AIDS, Alcohol and Drug Abuse and Teenage Pregnancy and in most cases the youth are the hardest hit, this is due to the fact that the only recreation young people have here is in the bars where honestly they are exposed to worrisome trends mentioned above. And in most cases the family ties and support structures disintergrate leaving the children with no one to offer mentorship, leadership and life skills education. SEDYEL has therefore offered a conducive environment to a lot of young people and offered them appropriate education. Personally I was involved with the gangs, but a very good example would be Tebogo Phetlhe, a 23 year old youngman who was also in the gangs. As a child, Tebogo was abused by his father, and therefore did all to stay away from home and as usual the only place to go to was the bars and being part of the gangs. He was at some point taken to jail after assaulting one community member and a couple of times tried to commit suicide due to the situation at home. Tebogo joined SEDYEL as a player and attended the referees course and today he is the Coordinator of the Referees Committee. His remarks below about the program sums it all
"My life has positively changed ever since I joined this program, I now feel part of my community and I can share my experiences of being a gangster with my peers to show them that I onced was lost but now I am found, I now feel like a complete humanbeing".

Yes all the Volunteers of SEDYEL are all youth, forming the Zonal Organizing Committees, in every village and responsible for overseeing the planning of league activities in their respective Zones. Zonal League Committees, which consists of the registered teams coaches and managers/secretaries and reponsible for mobilization of league teams and report to the Sports Council, which links all the zones together through Chairpersons from the Zonal League Committees and responsible for the overall running of the league in the whole district. Zonal Disciplinary Committees, which consists of all zonal referees and responsible for planning on officiating the league matches and making sure that the law and order in the field of play are obeyed and followed based on SEDYEL rules of the league and FIFA laws of the game. Referees Committee, consists of the Chairpersons of the five zonal disciplinary committees and responsible for the overall planning and implementation of the refereeing activities, identifying training needs for the referees, share matters and issues arising from the 5 zones. Peer Leaders forum, consists of 6 Peer Educators in every zone and responsible for educational activities in their respective zones. Awareness and Sensitization Committeee then constitutes of the Chairperson of the Peer Leaders Forum and is responsible for identifying training needs for Peer Educators and strengthening of the Educational component of the whole program.
The Sport Council, Awareness and Sensitization Committee and the Referees Committee are the Supreme Committees and the Chairpersons of these Committees then form the Executive Committee, which is responsible in overlooking the project's activities and identifying ways to sustain them as well as evaluating, documenting and reporting.

This structure was found very ideal as it allowes youth on the ground/grassroots level to solve matters and issues affecting them in their communities and then sharing them with other young people in other villages. So all activities that are carried out in SEDYEL are youth-driven from planning to implementation, monitoring and evaluation and documentation.

All the best,